


Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail

by executrix



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street, Revenge - Fandom
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nolan Ross walks into The Waterfront as Dr. Cox is having a really bad day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail

**TUESDAY**  
Three-thirty in the afternoon. Nolan realized that he’d had his Tods moccasin to the metal all since home. He parked on the cobblestoned street and peered through the window of the dark bar. It looked corny but probably not an active plague spot. 

He sat down at the bar. “I’d like some crabcakes, please. And a Natty Boh.” He thought again about what he had to do the next morning, and that he had nothing to do between now and then, except maybe go to the Aquarium, so he added a shot of Bushmill’s to the order. 

“Gotta see some ID,” said the barback. He had thick dark-framed glasses, insurrectionary hair, and cratered skin. 

“Oh, please!” Nolan said, but figured at some point he’d appreciate being carded. He waited for the “Are you THAT Nolan Ross?” but it didn’t happen.

“Also, we don’t do crabcakes.”

“I’m in a bar in **Fell’s Point** …”

“We do, however, have a special today. Couscous au bratwurst.”

Nolan shuddered. “Do you have a regular menu?”

With bad grace, Munch handed it over, and Nolan ordered a chicken salad club and a side of onion rings. 

The door opened again. A thin woman with dutch-doll black hair and a prominent mole near the corner of her mouth walked in. She looked so distressed that Munch derailed Nolan’s shot and slid it to her. She slammed it down and then seated herself at the bar. 

“It’s my fucking car,” she said. “It’s dead.”

“Want me to help you roll it?”

She made a disgusted noise.

“Did you get a tox screen?” Munch said. His personal opinion was that her car was much more likely to get driven into a wall at 90 mph (quasi-accidentally or not) than to be permitted to expire of natural causes.

“Keep ‘em comin’” she said. 

“Might as well switch to well if it’s going to be like that. What happened, Julianna?” Munch asked. 

“I’ve had that car since I was in college, and now it’s, it’s…”

In Munch’s opinion, a car might last as long as four marriages put together, but not multiplied, that was just unnatural. (He referred to his current chariot as The Honda for the Goyim and did not expect it to make its way to a sabbatical year.) Also, not that he could do anything to a car himself that wouldn’t turn it into an unintentional terrorist weapon, he wondered why auto repair would be beyond a doctor’s capacity. But, as he reminded himself, Cox never cured any patients, in fact, she never had any that would be in any worse shape if she screwed up. 

“I was going to be the opposite of you, Munch. Leaving Baltimore. Going to NYC.”

“You were always the opposite of me, Julianna,” Munch said gallantly. She scowled at him. “What does that even **mean**?” He shrugged.

“You have to promise me one thing, Munch,” she said. “Don’t call Mikey. He’d, you know, sail me to New York or something.”

Which didn’t sound too terrible to Munch. “No business of mine. Anyway, I’m leaving as soon as Bayliss clocks in. Tell **him.** ” He went to the serving hatch, signaled to the cook, and handed a blue plate to Julianna. “On the house,” She was so upset that she took up a fork and mechanically began to eat, without even a pro forma appeal against being subjected to the special without so much as a Miranda warning. 

Nolan crunched through toast and bacon to chicken and mayonnaise. “I’m sorry to hear about your car,” he said. Julianna shrugged and waved a hand—what’re you gonna do? He didn’t think she really needed another drink, even if she didn’t have a car to drive while intoxicated, so he ordered her a brownie with a scoop of strawberry ice cream although he couldn’t exactly have it sent over to her because they were about ten feet apart.

“So,” Nolan asked her, figuring he might as well do a little work while he was there. “Do you use the Internet?”

“Sure,” she said. “If I want a cup of coffee.”

“Hmmm?” he said. 

“Oh, you know, I might need a journal article or something, and it’s so slow you just get it started and then go up to the squad room, unless I’m trying to avoid Mikey, get some coffee…”’

Nolan compressed his lips. “We’re working on that. It’ll get a lot faster.”  
“Anyway, isn’t it all going to blow up in, like, a couple of years?” 

“It…is…not! That’s a myth!” He calmed down a little. “And the potential is amazing. Have you ever used the Internet to, you know, make friends?”

“I’d be happier if the Internet was handing out vows of chastity,” she said. “It would make my life a lot easier. That’s why you’re in town? Computer business?”

“Ummm, yeah,” Nolan said. He didn’t want to have to explain to this doubtless respectable crowd that his next stop was kiddie jail. 

Nolan’s eyes widened as a nice-looking and very tall man came in. (Nolan was instantly enamored of his sweet curly mouth, unilateral floppy bang, and studious wire-framed glasses that could have been swiped from a recording angel.) He hung up his raincoat, which gave Nolan front and back views. Nolan immediately envisioned a wire frame around the images. The newcomer rotated his shoulders backwards and tipped his head back. Then he cracked his knuckles, picked up a linen towel, and started polishing glasses. Nolan felt just like a tiny Disney princess. It was an unusual experience for him and he went with it. 

“Julianna!” Bayliss said. “I heard. I’m so sorry. It’s so unfair, but…there’s more bad karma than any other kind, isn’t there?”

“Actually,” Nolan said, “It’s a homeostatic system. There just is karma. The amount doesn’t change as you move through the circle.”

Julianna grunted. “Philosophy!” she said, and stood up, her hands braced on the bar. “I’m going to the john,” she said, as if she expected to at least have to argue and possibly fight her way there. 

“I’ve always had a high opinion of Cox,” Tim said earnestly.

Nolan looked at him, upward through eyelashes. “I don’t think I gave it much thought until I was about eleven,” he said. “I’ve been a big fan since then, though.”

“No, I, ummm…”

“I know,” Nolan said, with a fleeting press of his hand on the hand (like a concert pianist’s catcher’s mitt) that Tim was leaning over the bar with. 

Julianna came back, fluffed at her hair in the mirror behind the bar (making Nolan wonder why she hadn’t done it in the bathroom if she was going to). “I guess I’ll have to call my mom, stay over there until the car thing is straightened out. Wow, nothing like sleeping in your carefully preserved juvenile mausoleum. If I’m lucky the scotch tape on the David Bowie poster mummified and it won’t be looking at me all night.” 

Nolan cleared his throat and took out two folders. “I know you don’t know if I’m an axe murderer or something, if there was a T-3 here you could look me up, but there isn’t, so…anyway, I have two hotel rooms. One for me, one for my, ummm, business associate. She’s a…a young woman. There are two beds, and I won’t be seeing her until tomorrow.”

“Why’d you get two hotel rooms if you only need one tonight? Are they, like kosher? One for meat and one for dairy?” 

“Well, it was easier, I don’t like inconvenience,” he said. “And I like to make sure of things.”

“Probably famous last words, but today can’t get much worse,” Julianna said. “Thanks. But I closed my Baltimore accounts, and I won’t be able to pay you back until I open an account in New York.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, I already had the reservation,” he said. Julianna picked up her overnight bag, which would have the advantage of disarming suspicion at the hotel, and stepped outside, waiting for a cab to lurch over the cobblestones.

It was fairly busy at The Waterfront, so Nolan had a disconnected conversation with Bayliss, like one of those inconsequential pilgrimage discussions, where you can say anything because you’ll never the see recipient of your confidences ever again. After awhile, Nolan took out a business card, wrote “Sheraton—Room 409” on the back and handed it to Tim. “If you want to come over after you finish your shift, I’d love to see you.”

“It’ll be late,” Tim said.

“I don’t sleep that much,” Nolan said. He got a cab, went up to his room, put on the snowfall of terrycloth robe from the closet, and moved enough furniture to be able to plug in his modem. Snuggling into the collar of the robe, he downloaded his e-mails. He forgot about everything else eas he tried to figure out why the port of his latest software to AltaVista was flaky but usable, but the port to Yahoo wasn’t working at all. 

The room phone rang, startling him and sending him crawling along the carpet to where he put it. “Yes,” he said happily. “Send him up.” Then he looked out the window, realized he hadn’t closed the drapes, and saw that some of the soft hiss he’d been hearing for hours was contributed by a patter of rain. He pulled the cord of the drapes and stationed himself near the door. Then, when the brass knocker clicked against the door, he was ideally positioned for a full-contact coat-check. 

“Hi,” Nolan said. “You’re all wet. I’ll get you a towel.” He took one from the double stack, and ruffled around on Tim’s hair until Tim leaned in and put his hands around Nolan’s waist. Eventually Tim pulled back a little and re-possessed his mouth. “There’s, umm, something I need to tell you.”

“You’re positive? I always do safer sex anyway.” As a frequent traveler, he kept his Dopp kit stocked with condoms and lube and morning-after pills, although he tended not to bring anything more elaborate because you just couldn’t tell what would freak people out.

“No! I mean, I’m glad I’m not, and I get tested a lot. But, well, most of my, you know, experiences, have been with women.”

Nolan rotated a languid hand. “Me? About fifty-fifty as to whether I’m going to get kicked in the teeth with a tassel loafer or a Manolo stiletto. Well, we could stand here all night if that’s what you’re into, but…” He was too tactful to attribute the fine shiver running through Tim’s body to anything except the rain drying on his skin. “There’s a nice big bathtub,” Nolan said. Dry martini is optional—do you want one?”

“Busman’s holiday,” Tim said. “I drink a lot less since I started at The Waterfront.” 

“So, out of those wet clothes.” 

There was no way both of them were going to get into the bathtub without a car crusher, so Nolan hovered on the edge of the tub, holding a huge cake of black soap. Tim stretched out and braced his feet around the taps. He leaned back, letting the hot water buoy him up and he felt entirely safe and supported, by the water and by Nolan’s hand behind his head. (One sleeve of the robe went into the water as Nolan bent forward to kiss Tim, so the terrycloth was gray and the air was hazed with steam. Tim sat up again, and pulled at the bathrobe sash so he could reach further inside. 

After awhile, he said, “I’m turning into a prune,” so Nolan stepped back enough to let him out of the bathtub, and then hugged him. Tim sat down on the edge of the vanity (the polished stone was cold against his skin) and closed his eyes. 

“No,” Nolan said, a soft command. He scrubbed at the condensation on the mirror, grasped Tim’s shoulder, and pushed him half-way around. “Look at yourself. Look at us.” 

**WEDNESDAY**

“Nice jacket,” Nolan said. “You look amazing.” He releveed, leaned over, and kissed Tim’s neck. “It’s a good fit.”

Tim smirked, zipping up the leather, wishing Chris Rawls could see him. “Naturally. It was a present from a dominatrix.” He swaggered down the hall to the elevator, unaware that Julianna was in the next room and therefore not having to slink away because running into her again, here of all places, would be a Thing.

Half an hour later, Nolan knocked on the door of the suite. “Julianna? I’d be glad to give you a ride back to the city, if you don’t mind waiting while I, um, do an…errand.” 

Fortified with espresso that was unequal to the task, humming “When You’re Good to Mama, Mama’s Good to You” under his breath, Nolan pulled up at the gate of the reformatory. “Give me a little while, okay? 

Julianna craned her neck, looking for a pay phone. “Sure. I want to call the garage to see if my goddamn car is ready.” 

“You can use my **car phone** ,” Nolan said, not without pride. “I mean, it’s not like…” he took the Cross pen out of the inside breast pocket of his blazer, told it, “Open Channel D!” and got nothing but blank stares. “…but it makes phone calls,” he finished feebly.

Julianna pulled her Filofax out of a leather-trimmed canvas bag purchased six years earlier at a plumbing supply house, and found the garage’s number. Nolan took a deep breath and took the Vuitton carry-all from the shotgun seat. 

He didn’t know what to give somebody getting out of jail, other than the traditional “hookers and blow.” Of course he did have things to give her, of both sentimental and fiscal value. He reminded himself yet again that he had not ever been even one bit tempted to give Amanda ten thousand dollars or so and trouser the rest—and that ten thousand dollars would immediately vanish up her arm and kill her off in three months—and that a vast sum of money would give Amanda an incentive to live an indulgent yet productive life. 

He could see the metal door open, and a half-dozen or so teenage girls barrel out, carrying plastic shopping bags. He figured that the sum total of their possessions were in those bags, and he felt sorry for them but simultaneously just a little envious that they were that free and had so little to tie them down. 

They ran like hell between the fortress-like building and the chain-link fence with its lacy collar of razor wire. A couple of guards told them to slow down, and dragged out the suspense as long as they thought they could get away with before opening the gate. 

For a second, Nolan didn’t recognize Amanda. Her hawk’s nose and fox’s eyes, once surmounted by blonde curls, were now hiding under long, straight hair blue-black as Veronica’s in an Archie comic. It looked as if she had poured a bottle of ink over her head—assuming that, even in a penal time-warp, bottles of ink still existed. 

“Hey, Mands,” he said. There was a silence as she stared a hole between his clavicles. “Uh, I see you’re not wearing your necklace.” 

Amanda pushed out her lower lip defiantly. Nolan thought it was adorable. “Gave it to my girl,” she said. 

Wondering if he should revert to Plan A—no, Amanda was much too young and innocent for Bolivian marching powder—he said, “Hop in. I got you a nice suite at the Sheraton. I didn’t think you’d mind, I let my friend Julianna stay there last night.” He gestured toward the back seat, where Julianna was reading The Sun with an expression of profound disbelief. “And, ummm, I have some things from. From. From your father. That he wanted you to have.” 

Nolan drove back to the hotel in a car silent other than the oldies station. He said, “You must be hungry.” Julianna said, “Not really.” Amanda didn’t say anything. At the hotel restaurant, Julianna ordered a Cobb salad. Nolan ordered poached eggs and spinach and, feeling he deserved it, a Gibson. Amanda ordered chocolate pudding, a bacon cheeseburger, and banana cream pie for dessert. Apart from telling the waiter that she wanted the burger so rare that the cow didn’t even look sick, and making an unsuccessful bid for a beer, she was as silent as an entire RICO conspiracy getting Miranda warnings in a duvet factory. 

Nolan peeled a couple of hundreds out of his wallet, started to hand the money to Julianna, and responded to Amanda’s furious face by handing it to her. “Ummm, why don’t you, you know, go shopping? Amanda, you need clothes for, well, not orange jumpsuits or whatever.” (He wanted to say “school” but suspected how far that would get him, and she certainly didn’t need a job and the Junior League probably didn’t want her.) 

“Sure,” Julianna said. Because somebody whose entire wardrobe that was not on her body (three pairs of jeans, two pairs of shoes that weren’t cowboy boots, some tops, some underwear, a dress that she thought might have been navy blue, used indifferently for court, weddings, and funerals) fit into a carry-on was definitely the right person for the job. However, she still retained a faint hope that a few hour’s delay would allow her to re-schedule her retreat from Charm City in her own car—or, if she had to, to take up Nolan’s offered lift. 

“Well,” Julianna said as they prowled through Hutzler’s. “What’re you gonna do now?” 

Amanda shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re a grownup and you don’t know. I’m an incorrigible juvenile delinquent, why would I?” 

“I guess you’re not supposed to ask people why they ended up, well, you know.” 

“Technically, for arson. But, mostly because they had it in for me. The people who killed my father. My father was murdered,” Amanda said proudly. 

“No shit? So was mine,” Julianna said, which was a conversation-stopper. 

They went into the dressing room. “How does this look?” Amanda asked. 

“Like a child prostitute whose pimp has no sense of style,” Julianna said. 

“Good. I’ll take it. Except, could you see if they have it in a smaller size?” Julianna returned with some even scantier garments. 

“So, I guess you’re not supposed to ask people why they got fired.” 

“It was a case. It would have saved the city a lot of money if I lied about it. I thought about it, but I decided not to.” 

“And they canned your ass?” 

“Like last year’s Dinty Moore hash.” 

“Wow,” Amanda said deadpan. “I’m so glad I have a positive female role model.” 

****THURSDAY** **

When Nolan woke up at 11 am, the first thing he noticed was the envelope standing out, glaring white, on the thick sand-colored carpet. He assumed that it was the bill, so he went to get it so he could confirm the hit to his platinum card. He braced himself, also assuming that Amanda had taken advantage of the freedom of the minibar to the extent of about a Volkswagen. 

However, it was a note, presumably from Amanda, on hotel stationery. It said “Bye, I have things I have to do by myself.” The room was empty; her clothes and, of course, the Infinity box, were gone. 

He didn’t see her for years after that, although every few months a NolCorp investigator would inform him where she was and that she was, for some values of OK, OK. 

He did see Julianna one more time, in the summer of 2001, at a benefit for All Saints Hospital at Windows on the World. (Nolan had an on-and-off thing with one of their vascular surgeons.) She was wearing a black dress, longer in the back than in the front, either draggled or a fashion statement, and low enough to be what would later be described as a wardrobe malfunction. For his part, Nolan wore a Hugo Boss tuxedo and a waistcoat that Gieves and Hawkes had whipped up from some dead-stock pre-World War I brocade. 

He danced with her, and said, “See? I told you it wouldn’t blow up,” meaning the Internet. But she didn’t remember. 

**Author's Note:**

> This happens just after HLOTS 6.14. Assuming that HLOTS episodes take place more or less when they aired, that would be around 1998. And as for Revenge chronology, if Amanda aged out of juvie when she was 16, then she’d be 30 in 2012, which is plausible.


End file.
